---
title: "International School Teacher"
description: "A licensed teacher who works at an American or international school overseas, teaching an American, British or IB curriculum."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/international-school-teacher"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# International School Teacher

**Category:** Educational Instruction and Library · **SOC code:** 25-2021 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 25-2021.00

A licensed teacher who works at an American or international school overseas, teaching an American, British or IB curriculum.

Also advertised as: Overseas Teacher; American International School Teacher; IB Teacher; Expat Teacher; Teacher Abroad.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $63,970 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** Not published by BLS
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $47,960 to $104,340, with the middle half between $57,710 and $81,450
- **Total US employment:** 1,388,390
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** -0.4% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 87,500 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 51/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 1,388,390 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $47,960 |
| 25th | $57,710 |
| 50th (median) | $63,970 |
| 75th | $81,450 |
| 90th | $104,340 |
| Mean (average) | $72,650 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| WA | $102,350 | $95,643 | 28,980 |
| CA | $99,650 | $90,002 | 155,160 |
| DC | $96,580 | $87,879 | 3,750 |
| MA | $94,000 | $88,883 | 29,930 |
| RI | $90,930 | $88,903 | 3,830 |
| NY | $85,760 | $79,466 | 101,410 |
| CT | $80,600 | $77,792 | 16,330 |
| AK | $79,260 | $77,433 | 3,500 |
| NJ | $78,200 | $71,872 | 40,300 |
| MD | $77,680 | $74,010 | 29,610 |
| OH | $77,370 | $83,396 | 47,870 |
| OR | $77,130 | $74,622 | 12,600 |
| PA | $77,060 | $78,978 | 48,370 |
| MN | $76,350 | $77,418 | 26,640 |
| DE | $75,920 | $76,066 | 2,900 |

39 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 54 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/international-school-teacher/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/international-school-teacher.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 1,419,300 in the 2025–2035 base year to 1,413,400 by the end of the cycle — a loss of 5,800 jobs, or -0.4%. Declining: -0.4% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 87,500 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 78.2% |
| Master's Degree | 21.8% |

## What the work involves

- Plan and teach lessons aligned to an American, British or IB curriculum
- Adapt instruction for students learning English as an additional language
- Assess student work and write reports for parents
- Coach a club, sport or after-school activity
- Chaperone school trips and international competitions
- Collaborate with colleagues on accreditation and curriculum reviews
- Communicate with families from many different cultures

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Learning Strategies — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Instructing — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- English Language — importance 4.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Psychology — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Therapy and Counseling — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Expression — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Recognition — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Clarity — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Social (S), Artistic (A), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| S — Social | 7.00 |
| A — Artistic | 4.63 |
| C — Conventional | 3.78 |
| E — Enterprising | 3.54 |
| I — Investigative | 3.35 |
| R — Realistic | 2.64 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ENFJ | 76.8 |
| ENFP | 76.4 |
| ESFP | 75.6 |
| ESFJ | 66.7 |
| INFJ | 64.3 |

Best-fitting types: ENFJ, ENFP, ESFP.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Elementary School Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/elementary-school-teacher) — median $63,970
- [High School Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/high-school-teacher) — median $72,040
- [Middle School Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/middle-school-teacher) — median $64,370
- [Adult Basic Education, Adult Secondary Education, and English as a Second Language Instructor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/adult-basic-education-adult-secondary-education-and-english-as-a-second-language-instructor) — median $61,540
- [Kindergarten Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/kindergarten-teacher) — median $62,680
- [Tutor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/tutor) — median $43,350
- [Special Education Teacher, Elementary School](https://nuecareer.com/careers/special-education-teacher-elementary-school) — median $67,170
- [Special Education Teacher, Secondary School](https://nuecareer.com/careers/special-education-teacher-secondary-school) — median $74,260
- [Special Education Teacher, Kindergarten](https://nuecareer.com/careers/special-education-teacher-kindergarten) — median $67,170
- [Special Education Teacher, Middle School](https://nuecareer.com/careers/special-education-teacher-middle-school) — median $66,810

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/international-school-teacher